ADAMS, John Quincy, (son of John Adams, father of Charles Francis Adams, brother-in-law
of William Stephens Smith),
a Senator and a Representative from Massachusetts and 6th President
of the United States; born in Braintree, Mass., July 11, 1767; acquired his
early education in Europe at the University of Leyden; was graduated from
Harvard University in 1787; studied law; was admitted to the bar and commenced
practice in Boston, Mass.; appointed Minister to Netherlands 1794, Minister to
Portugal 1796, Minister to Prussia 1797, and served until 1801; commissioned to
make a commercial treaty with Sweden in 1798; elected to the Massachusetts
State senate in 1802; unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. House of
Representatives in 1802; elected as a Federalist to the United States Senate
and served from March 4, 1803, until June 8, 1808, when he resigned, a
successor having been elected six months early after Adams broke with the
Federalist party; Minister to Russia 1809-1814; member of the commission which
negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814; Minister to England 1815-1817, assisted
in concluding the convention of commerce with Great Britain; Secretary of State
in the Cabinet of President James Monroe 1817-1825; decision in the 1824
election of the President of the United States fell, according to the
Constitution of the United States, upon the House of Representatives, as none
of the candidates had secured a majority of the electors chosen by the states,
and Adams, who stood second to Andrew Jackson in the electoral vote, was chosen
and served from March 4, 1825, to March 3, 1829; elected as a Republican to the
U.S. House of Representatives for the Twenty-second and to the eight succeeding
Congresses, becoming a Whig in 1834; served from March 4, 1831, until his
death; chairman, Committee on Manufactures (Twenty-second through Twenty-sixth,
and Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses), Committee on Indian Affairs
(Twenty-seventh Congress), Committee on Foreign Affairs (Twenty-seventh
Congress); unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1834; died
in the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., February 23, 1848; interment in
the family burial ground at Quincy, Mass.; subsequently reinterred in United
First Parish Church.

Bibliography

American National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Adams, John Quincy.
The Diary of John Quincy Adams. Edited by David Grayson Allen,
Robert J. Taylor, et al. 2 vols. to date. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1981-; Nagel, Paul C.
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life. New York:
Knopf, 1997; Remini, Robert.
John Quincy Adams. New York: Times Books, 2002.